This invention relates to an antimicrobial and antihelminthic agent, to a process for extracting the antimicrobial/antihelminthic agent from plant material, to a composition containing the antimicrobial/antihelminthic agent, and to a plant extract containing the antimicrobial/antihelminthic agent.
In most countries of subtropical Africa, bacterial and fungal infections represent an increasing problem, particularly with patients suffering from severe immune deficiencies, such as AIDS (Atindehou et al., 2002). There are also serious problems in controlling helminth parasites. Both with microorganisms and parasites there is a serious problem of resitance developing against therapeutic products. Moreover, the validation of medicinal plant based therapies is imperative for African developing countries, as more than 70 percent of the population use such remedies (Pousset, 1994).
Although various studies in the vast and still growing literature on traditional medicine have reported the indigenous use of medicinal plants in the treatment of oral diseases, oral health-related problems have not been particularly singled out for comment (Tapsoba and Deschamps, 2006).
It is clear that reliance on plant products for the management of oral and other health-related problems is common around the world (Tapsoba and Deschamps, 2006). Publications are found on this topic not only in African countries such as Equatorial Guinea (Akendengue, 1992), Madagascar (Novy, 1997), and South Africa (Lin et al., 1999) but also in other parts of the world including Nepal (Manandhar, 1998), Guatemala (Hunter and Arbona, 1995), and Palestine (Ali-Shtayeh et al., 2000).
Medicinal plants have attracted considerable research attention as new sources of antimicrobial agents against, for instance, Candida infections (Taweechaisupapong et al., 2005). A wide variety of plant extracts have antimicrobial effects and anti-inflammatory properties (Kweifio-Okai, 1991; Matsuda et al., 1997; Taweechaisupapong et al., 2000a; Taweechaisupapong et al., 2000b; Atindehou et al., 2002; Mahasneh, 2002; Taweechaisupapong et al., 2002a; Taweechaisupapong et al., 2002b, Shai et al., 2008). Several herbal extracts have been added to some cosmetics and health-care preparations (Taweechaisupapong et al., 2005).